Science

Ian Craft obituary


The early days of assisted reproduction were fraught with controversy, as media commentators and religious figures denigrated its practitioners for playing God or interfering with nature.

Louise Brown, the world’s first baby to be conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF), arrived in 1978. By 2018, eight million babies worldwide had been born using IVF or related techniques. The rapid acceptance of the concept was largely due to the pioneering work of gynaecologists such as Ian Craft, who, along with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe (who treated Brown’s mother), gave infertile couples hope that they need not accept their childless state.

Craft, who has died aged 81, was an innovative surgeon who achieved a number of firsts. His clinics saw the first successful birth of IVF twins in Europe in 1982, and Britain’s first triplets in 1984; he oversaw the first birth through transferring eggs and sperm to the uterus (1982), and later the first in Britain using gamete intrafallopian transfer, or GIFT (1986).

He also achieved Europe’s first birth using a donor egg (1987), and the first using a frozen donor embryo (1990); and in the early 1990s he was the first in the country granted a licence to create embryos using direct injection of the sperm into the egg (intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI). He developed treatment with combinations of hormones and drugs that increased the number and quality of eggs that could be collected per cycle, also increasing the likelihood of successful births.

His clinic was lined with photos of blissful couples holding babies, and in pursuit of that end result he pushed boundaries harder than most. In the late 80s he caused an outcry for using eggs from donors known to the prospective parents, something that is now common practice.

His was one of very few clinics to offer treatment with donor eggs to post-menopausal women, arguing that as long as they were fit and healthy there was no reason why they should not become mothers. They included Liz Buttle, the hill farmer from Wales who in 1997 gave birth to a son at 60 (though she had claimed to be 49 when she approached Craft). There was no subterfuge in the case of Lynn Bezant, who was 56 when she gave birth to twins in 2001 after treatment with donor eggs.

When Craft began to practise as an IVF specialist, the field was entirely unregulated. But in Britain after 1984 the careful deliberations of the committee of inquiry into human fertilisation and embryology, chaired by Mary Warnock, brought all such procedures under licensing by what became the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Craft was something of a thorn in the side of the HFEA, speaking out against restricting the number of embryos implanted (to reduce the risk of multiple births), about time limits on the storage of frozen embryos, and about age limits on treatment.

But he vehemently resisted the label of “maverick” and he and his colleagues meticulously documented his widely adopted innovations in academic journals on reproductive health. Reproductive specialists who trained under him have gone on to head fertility clinics across the world.

Craft was born in Wanstead, east London, one of three sons of Reginald Craft, a Barclays Bank employee, and his wife, Lois (nee Logan), who also worked in the bank before her marriage. He grew up in Woodford, attending first St Mary’s Convent there and later Dame Alice Owen’s school for boys in Islington.

A teacher encouraged him to pursue a career in medicine and he underwent his initial training at Westminster medical school. He opted to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology: he always claimed to be driven by a desire to make people happy, and saw helping women to give birth as the best means of doing so.

Following posts at Westminster, Kingston and Queen Charlotte’s hospitals, he was appointed professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal Free hospital in 1976. Under his care gave birth to Europe’s first test tube twins were born to Jo and Stuart Smith in 1982.

The same year he moved to the Cromwell hospital and set up a dedicated assisted conception facility before transferring to the private sector in 1985, establishing fertility treatment at the Wellington hospital. For the final 20 years of his career he operated his own private clinic in Harley Street, the London Fertility Centre; he also helped to establish the Dubai Gynaecology and Fertility Centre.

Garrulous, optimistic and boundlessly enthusiastic, he was hands-on in his approach, meeting couples and implanting embryos as one of the centre’s clinical team. In 2000 he fulfilled a long-held wish to become a country gentleman, buying a 125-acre estate with a Georgian mansion and working farm in north Devon, which he set about restoring with his customary energy while still directing the centre.

The project was far from complete when he fell seriously ill in 2009, and he spent the rest of his life in a care home. He was well enough, however, to continue pursuing his love of Promenade concerts, live opera and theatre, and of cricket, rugby and football.

Craft married his childhood sweetheart, Jackie Symmons, in 1959. He credited her with giving him the confidence to embark on his career, and acknowledged that the intense pace of his working life left her largely responsible for the upbringing of their children. The couple divorced in the late 90s.

They had two sons, Simon and Adrian, who survive him.

Ian Logan Craft, gynaecologist, born 11 July 1937; died 3 June 2019



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